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Tag: songwriter

This track really brought to a head how much I love the requests concept. Not only was this a song that was totally unknown to us all (well definitely myself and Peter, it seems Vicki is quite a Billy Joel fan), but it was requested way back before we had even upgraded to a three piece outfit. Not only that but even the duo videos were a rarity, scattered between weeks of solo vids. Initially I wondered if a solo reimagining was in line for this track, then it moved on to myself and Peter considering a multi track pre-record, before it finally landed here with a full band performance.

What I most enjoy about this is that the track called for some substantial lead guitar work. Now, I’m not aiming for faux humility here and saying “Oh I can’t play lead guitar”, in a pinch I can and I can more than hold my own with the basics. I do consider myself a vocalist and rhythm guitarist first and foremost however and in recent years I have strayed further still from playing any lead guitar. So then we arrive at a song which requires a rhythm guitar, lead guitar and a saxophone, at times simultaneously. Ok, we definitely stood no chance one of us would turn into a sax player, but through some thorough reworking that subbed in the bass for sax we managed to pull it off. Well, in theory we did until I completely f**ed up the first two bars of the solo. But in all I was quite chuffed with our re-arranging techniques and with an eye to playing live as a three piece, arrangements and performances like this are massively important for the growth of the group.

Then of course there’s the song. As I’ve mentioned multiple times before myself and Peter are massive fans of Bruce Springsteen and to me this song is the closest that these two favourite sons of New Jersey have come to each other. You May Be Right slots in alongside songs like Sherry Darling and Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) with absolute ease in my mind and it was great fun taking on the challenge of creating a live big band sound with only three people. Hopefully we’ve done it some justice and as always – watch, like, share, subscribe.

Man it’s been one hell of a year. Things got extremely quiet on the niallon front earlier this year, with Peter away we had one solitary upload carrying us through most of the first 4 months of the year (and even that video was filmed late 2016!) We got back on course in June though with Mr Brightside and really that video served as a bit of a watershed video for our channel. We were actually primarily looking to get a cover of This Is What It Feels Like done in that session and Mr Brightside was an off the cuff attempt that wound up being the main video from the day. The reason this became such a landmark video for us was because until that point we had been very business like with the niallon channel at times, everything was laid out in a neat plan because that way then we couldn’t screw it up. We were being smart and prepared, but as a result we were missing out on the great music that can be created through spontaneity.

As the year progressed we continued this trend, coupled with some requests and we also turned into a somewhat full fledged band to boot! Essentially we wound up then with the variety we find now – the solos, the requests and the bands. Sometimes these categories overlap with each other, and sometimes we can wind up with a few weeks in one particular neighbourhood. All 3 of us have 9 – 5 commitments we work around too and on a lot of occasions logic and practicality will dictate what we can or can’t get done on a given week. One thing that we will always maintain though is that as long as the fun is there, we will keep producing this content. The last thing this project was ever supposed to feel like is a job, we have enough of those already. This is our outlet, our opportunity for creativity. We do it for ourselves, but the thought that even one person might watch is enough to keep it going. Thank you to you all for the likes, watches, shares and subscriptions up to now, and here’s hoping it can continue. Merry Xmas Everybody 😁

Yes I forgot to do a write up on ‘Zombie’ (and ‘The Funeral’ come to think of it) and yes we’re back to solo videos this week. I can be consistent in my inconsistency though, haven’t you heard?

This song just straight up breaks my heart if I’m being honest. There are a couple of thousand things I reckon Brian Fallon wrote this song in relation to, and there are a thousand more things personally to me that I can relate it to and in essence, that’s a large part of why I love songwriting. A part of you wants every listener to get what you meant when you wrote it, another part of you enjoys the different interpretations rolling in, especially if they are well wide of the mark to where your head was when you wrote it. I listen to ‘National Anthem’ and I am regularly struck dumb by the lines “I remember when she looked so good in that dress / Now she just screams that I promised her more than this / Take it easy baby, it ain’t over yet” and to me they are some of the finest words ever committed to paper in relation to the trials and tribulations of love and marriage. They’re also the only explicit reference in the song to those topics. Technically speaking, the song is more focused on the modern day tech obsession and maybe a little loss that Fallon feels is deriving from that (“Everybody lately is living up in space / Flying through transmissions on invisible airwaves”). To me though, those aforementioned lines are just so powerful that they dominate the entire song. Whereas they are mostly an aside in reality, to me the rest of the song is the aside. But that’s music, and that’s lyrics, that’s art. That’s also enough from me, and I swear the I’m Talkin’ Here slacking off is over!

I was first introduced to this song via Rod Stewart’s cover. Suffice to say I was surprised to find out that it was originally written and recorded by Creedence Clearwater Revival. Up until that point I solely knew them for Bad Moon Rising which in turn I solely knew as the song from An American Werewolf In London. I can confirm I’ve now educated myself far more thoroughly with CCR’s back catalogue though and this song has remained one of my favourites of theirs.

We have covered a few tracks in the past where the intent has been to shine a spotlight on some songs that get dismissed as run of the mill, when in fact there’s a very sincere and well thought out piece buried within layers of production. This one somewhat falls into that category, though I’d hardly argue that the sincerity is absent in the original. Frontman John Fogerty maintains that the song was written in relation to rising tensions within the band and specifically the impending departure of his brother Tom from the group, despite the theorising that it related to the Vietnam war amongst other things. Nobody can argue that there is a genuine level of emotion and strife to be heard in the original but for me there’s an alternate spin available by bringing it down a bit more in pace, tearing the song open and letting it be even more raw. And that’s how we ended up here! As always, watch, like, share, subscribe!

Taking a break from covers and requests for this week, we decided to dust off another of the originals. Castaway was one of the easiest songs to write out of any of my efforts…lyrically that is. The bulk of it all arrived in one go while I was sat idly by waiting to meet up with some friends, in those glorious days before we had so much to easily distract and whipping out a notepad was an acceptable way to pass the time. Originally, it was a very lively bouncy number and I was quite happy with it. As time went on though I felt it didn’t really fit the lyrical content, at least how I intended it. To me the song was about the desire to go and do the things in the song, rather than someone actually in the process of doing them. The endless debate about writer’s intention versus listener’s interpretation is one I frequently find myself in – do we seek the writer’s interpretation of the song or our own? Everyone is different, I usually can’t decide myself, but I wrote this with a specific intention while at the same time I love hearing different interpretations.

So we finally get back around to the originals, starting with 21 Times Around The Sun. This song has been knocking around for a while, and same as Thirteen, we had a version up on the YouTube page from years ago, but it has since then gone through a tonne of revisions. The origin of the song was when two of my friends, the first (2) of the gang to turn 21, had a quiet moment of reflection one evening (they were drunk, I’m pretty sure) and got to thinking about how, for all the hoopla made over 21st birthdays, that they will have travelled around the sun 21 times. Cool concept right? Even if you think you’ve achieved nothing when you reach that eponymous age, you’ve at least got that to your name. From there the song was concocted, written in the week before the party and debuted there. Originally it was a little stilted, too much focus on the lyrics and not enough on the song overall I think. But over the years we have worked on it and I think we finally have it nailed, nowadays it resembles very little of the original version but it’s all the better for it. As per usual, watch, like, share, repeat and make sure to watch to the end!

James Blunt. Two words that can cause so much division, usually followed by vitriol, and few can justifiably explain why. Nobody was more sick of hearing the constant refrain of “… you’re beautiful…” across airwaves in the last ten years than the man himself and sadly most people missed the fact that he is an exceptional talent in the meantime. On Thursday night he reminded a near full 3Arena just how good he is.